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About JJ

S. Jae-Jones (called JJ) is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and the NYT bestselling author of Wintersong and Shadowsong. Before moving to grits country, she was a YA fiction editor in New York City. A southern California native, she now lives in North Carolina, and many other places on the internet, including Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and her blog.

Author Archive | JJ

Julie C. Dao is a proud Vietnamese-American who was born in upstate New York. She studied medicine in college, but came to realize blood and needles were her Kryptonite. By day, she worked in science news and research; by night, she wrote books about heroines unafraid to fight for their dreams, which inspired her to follow her passion of becoming a published author. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is her debut novel. Julie lives in […]

Because I’m highly predictable and like to repeat myself, this is apparently the second post about what makes romances swoonworthy I’ve written for PubCrawl. (Oops!) And I’m uncreative to boot, as I tied that post to Valentine’s Day as well. Ah well, I’m going to blame this one on post-release brain farts. Anyway, I don’t mind talking about swoonworthy romances again because, to be honest, it’s a topic I like discussing. I am, at heart, a […]

All right, as some of y’all might know, I tend to be of the School of Hard Truths when it comes to publishing (especially on the podcast). Here at PubCrawl we try to be as encouraging as possible, but neither do we want to sugarcoat every aspect of this business, thereby giving people a false sense of complacency. Writing is hard, folks. Publishing is, in many ways, even harder. It’s harder because outcomes or results rarely […]

I am writing book 2. And I am in agony. Everyone told me that writing your second book (first book under contract) would be much, much harder than writing your debut. I knew to expect it, knew that it would be likely I’d be grappling with doubt and imposter syndrome, and yet here I am in the middle of writing book 2, feeling completely blindsided by the process. Even though I knew this was coming, […]

The Writer as Tour Guide 6 Tips for Writing Outside Your Own Culture Let’s say that you run a tour company where you serve as bus driver and tour guide for people who want to have an intense, immersive experience of a fascinating city. Ideally, you should know that city intimately. But what if you’ve never been there? You could hire a local bus driver and tour guide—someone who’s familiar with the history, the streets, […]